Monthly Archives: August 2010

This is a summary of a really helpful paper which introduced the idea of problem-solving as a feature of effective thinking and learning. The paper was in a collection of papers that I bought from the remaindered books table in … Continue reading →

Joe Agassi (1927 – ) is one of several first generation Popperians who served an apprenticeship as Popper’s research assistant. He has a huge record of publications and he deserves a special mention for his work on metaphysics which turned up in … Continue reading →

Larry Boland, like Ian Jarvie, patrols the ramparts of critical rationalism in that great outpost of the empire next to Alaksa. On a good day he can probably see Sarah Palin. He comes to the club by courtesy of a … Continue reading →

Amazon has added permalinks and also the opportunity for comments on reviews. A couple of people have responded to a comment that I posted on a review of a book by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. These are the three comments. This is … Continue reading →

Taking up Tony Lloyd’s comment on Ryle’s review of The Open Society and its Enemies, and the hint that there were juicy anti-Wittgenstein notes. One of Wittgenstein’s followers, Rush Rhees, was so angry with Ryle’s review that he sat down and … Continue reading →

O’Hear wrote a book called Karl Popper (1980) in The Arguments of the Philosophers Series. He argued that we cannot do without both justification and induction. Since that time he has been immune to the counter-arguments of non-justificationists. The following extracts … Continue reading →

I am just about to address O’Hear’s defence of induction in reply to Popper. But first a check on the problem. What is the point of mounting a defence of Popperism, or CR or whatever? Bearing in mind that the … Continue reading →

The latest Prestigious Critical Rationalist Scholar is Roger Sandall, a refugee from New Zealand who has made a new life amidst the vibrant beachside culture of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. With wide experience of life as a film-maker and … Continue reading →

Popper does better in the Index of this volume (compared with one entry and three pages in Vol 1). Here we find pages 63, 201, 235, 237, 238-9 and 461-3. The favourable impression is not supported by the content.

"One of the main tasks for human reason is to make the universe we live in understandable to ourselves. This is the task of science. There are two different components of about equal importance in this enterprise. The first is poetic inventiveness ..."
– Karl Popper